Scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah receives $500,000 prize from Library of Congress

NEW YORK — Author-scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah has received a $500,000 lifetime achievement award from the Library of Congress.

Appiah, 70, has won the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, given every two years to “individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society.” Appiah is known for such books as “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen” and for co-editing “Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African American Experience.”

“Dr. Appiah’s philosophical work is elegant, groundbreaking and highly respected,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement Thursday. “His writing about race and identity transcends predictable categories and encourages dialogue across traditional divisions.”

Appiah is the Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a former president of PEN America.

Previous winners of the Kluge prize include Danielle Allen and Drew Gilpin Faust.